Big Beautiful Photos Of Canada's Lucrative And Destructive Oil Sands

Canada has an oil source under its lands that is the second largest after Saudi Arabia.

Its ‘oil sands’ in the northwest of the country, made of a mixture of sand, water and oil slick, is becoming the biggest source of crude oil imports into the U.S. in 2010, as a new report of the research group IHS shows.

The first attempts to make use of this natural phenomenon were made in the 1960s, however the massive expansion of extraction facilities kicked off after 2003, with oil prices rising.

But production is a risky business — a tremendous amount of water and natural gas is used for the extraction process, and nearby boreal forests have been destroyed for open pit mining.

A Canadian artist, Louis Helbig, took aerial pictures of the area, fascinated by the power of industry. With his permission we’re running a selection. More can be seen at www.beautifuldestruction.ca.